Schumer calls on DEA to allow local prescription drug take-backs

Thursday

Oct 24, 2013 at 4:49 PMOct 25, 2013 at 9:37 AM

By James Battagliajbattaglia@messengerpostmedia.com

After Senator Charles Schumer’s wife, Iris Weinshall, had her wisdom teeth removed earlier this year, her dentist sent her home with instructions to take one oxycontin pill each night for three nights. Her prescription was for 50 pills.“Forty-seven of those pills sat on our medicine cabinet shelf,” Schumer said during a visit to Faris Pharmacy in Greece on Wednesday, October 23. “When kids see those pills, they say, ‘This is OK for me.’”Schumer was in Greece to call on the Drug Enforcement Agency to approve regulations that would allow pharmacies and community organizations to hold drug take-back events or become regular drop-off sites to keep extra prescription medications out of homes and off the streets.Currently, the DEA alone has the authority to sanction community take-back events.“The pharmacy is the logical place to have our take-back program,” Schumer said. “You trust your pharmacist. You talk to your pharmacist about things you wouldn’t talk to your friends about. They’re local, they’re in the neighborhood, and everyone knows where to go.”In 2011, over 2,000 cases of prescription drug abuse were reported in the Rochester/Finger Lakes area. In Brighton this August, police were called to Glen Ellyn Way when a house was burglarized for prescription drugs. In March, Monroe County sheriffs investigated the theft of prescription drugs from a Main Street home in Churchville. In Gates a woman was charged with petit larceny for stealing prescription drugs from a series of homes.“Criminals are robbing homes, and they go not for the jewelry box but for the medicine cabinet because these drugs are so valuable on the shelves,” Schumer said.Schumer said prescription drug abuse among area high-schoolers was increasing while alcohol abuse was on the decline, and 70 percent of those students tried prescription drugs for the first time after finding them in the medicine cabinet at home.“It is well known that abuse of prescription drugs is the most rapidly growing area of drug abuse among teens and young adults,” said pharmacist Daud Munawar, President-Elect of the Pharmacy Society of Rochester. “Senator Schumer’s leadership is gratefully appreciated and, with the support of local pharmacies like Faris, will serve to protect the children of Western New York.”Schumer also called on the DEA to establish a new buyback program that would pay people for their extra prescription medications using money seized during drug busts.“We get billions of dollars of forfeiture money,” Schumer said. “Use a little of it to buy back. It would not cost the taxpayers one nickel. The amount of money it would cost (overall) would be saved 10 times over by all the kids who don’t need drug rehabilitation anymore.”While instituting a drug buyback program would require new legislation, Schumer’s take-back initiatives would only require a change in regulation. He said the changes could be made by Christmas if enough citizens voiced their concern.“Tell the DEA you want action,” Schumer said. “Tell them you want to get these drugs out of our kids’ hands. When crack came about, society didn’t do anything for 10 or 15 years, and it did damage for decades. We want to stop this before it becomes so embedded in our society we can’t get it out.”